Do People Know If You Unfollow Them On Instagram? Social Media Creeping Is Easier Than Ever

Oh Instagram, you ubiquitous enabler of social stalking — I mean, um, peeking into the lives of your friends. Yes, that sounds much better. OK, let's be honest here: Who hasn't done a little Instagram creeping? We — I mean, um, all the other people who do this — know the cardinal rule: Only look, never like. But sometimes, you fall out of like with someone and you really don't need to see their Instagram posts anymore because you're totally above that. Now, let's think about this from the other side of those photos and the people who take them. Do people know if you unfollow them on Instagram?

Fret not, fellow Instagrammers. Your secrets are safe — for the most part. According to Instagram's Help Center, "People won't be notified when you unfollow them." So there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth.

Instagram has made social creeping actually pretty easy for users as they don't provide notifications for when someone unfollows you. People aren't notified when you remove someone as a follower on Instagram, either. Social media has created a whole new beast of online social etiquette — heaven forbid someone finds out they've been unfollowed and you've dropped them from your social feed.

But this also creates an environment where it's super easy to just scope out someone from afar across their social media accounts — and it doesn't take much for social media creeping to turn into actual online cyber stalking. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, as many as 1 in 4 people have been victims of some form of cyber stalking.